Triumphant Return

...

There was nothing new in Sandria Jara, but I did find a sidequest I forgot to do before. On the west side of this area is a small place called Simon's House. He's all alone and having issues with his well, so he asks us to see what's causing the problem. He suspects it's a diseased squirrel.

Head down the well and defeat the mobs that pose no threat at this point. This was defiantly an early game mission. The boss can poison himself, but I read a book in Simon's house suggesting we use an antidote on it, so I did. After it dies, and you return to Simon, you get two accessories I really wish I had earlier! One lowers MP cost by 25%, and the other allows the user to counterattack. After this, I carried on to Blaze HQ.

Slash told us to wait for him in his room while he spoke to the boss, but we blew him off. "We've heard that one before," and went into the meeting hall. The veterans decided that now is the time to attack Tren head on, but they disagree on the exact specifics. While they bicker about it, someone tells us to head north to see Dr. Brantle. Slash warns us that he's a strange person, but he helped Garin become stronger years ago. But before that, we have a reunion with Monsen, the mechanic from Ellea. Xero, Enda, and he catch up, but things get strange quick. He tells us that Slash is a crazy man who killed his wife. We try to put it out of our minds, but there's something we can't quite kick. But we'll worry about it later.
 
The path to the doctor is through the training yards to the north. Kina can blow open the way, and we need to walk through The Rensets. It's a long walk through the mountains, where we have to fight snakes and flying bugs that have reflect already cast on them. Climb until you get to a zipline. The game calls it a ziplone, but it's more of a rope elevator. We have to ride a platform all the way down to the bottom, but we're not alone. First, we have to fight two battles with mobs we've already fought. Ho-hum. But the third fight is a boss battle.

Bellweather is joined by two reflect bugs, so take them out first. From here, hope Belly doesn't eat the ropes. There are five in total, but I saved two. Besides that, I don't remember this guy being anything special. He's a plant, and I think he was weak to light as well. Without Asera, I can't really know. Also, use delay. I don't know how we plan to get back up, but we're here now. So head north, and we'll see the sky begin to darken.

As it gets darker and darker, we'll automatically walk to a large tower in the middle of the forest. This is the Citadel of Arnoa. It gives everyone the creeps. Slash is fine, though, and says that it's all for show. The horror vibes continue as the doors open by themselves, and we walk in. Deeper in is the crazy doctor himself, Dr. Brantle. He's playing around with a tesla coil, being showy, until he accidentally sets himself on fire. Slash puts him out and lets him know why we're here. During the next few minutes, we learn a lot about the world. This planet has several crystals that control magic. We heard about one in mines of Camdren last night, but here are more details. Furthermore, whenever a human is born, they gain a strong connection to at least one of the crystals and a weaker link to others. Slash, for example, is strongly connected to fire, with darkness and earth being weak connections. Even a weak connection allows someone to use a basic level spell of that element. No one knows why or how it fits together, but it does. There are even some who think there are more crystals out there with obscure or secret connections. I start to wonder about the Guide and what his "connection" really meant. Anyway, Dr. Brantle takes our blood. Kina first, who remains stoic Enda is afraid it'll hurt, but not of the lack of sterilization, until Kina tells her it was fine. It was not fine. The doctor gets into an argument with Slash and stabs him even though Slash had been here before. Xero tries to run away because he's ashamed of his lack of fire connection, but he gets his in the end. Dr. Brantle takes their blood (I assume it's blood) for further testing and tells us all we can sleep there tonight. But don't go upstairs past midnight!

Xero wakes up in the middle of the night to find Enda missing. She's upstairs and scares him when he goes looking for her. She wants to look at the stars with him like they used to at The Spot, but Xero says they can't. Something flickers, but it isn't clear what happened. When they head down the stairs, though, they're in a totally different place! We keep on until we're attacked by mobs! This entire dungeon sucked. Everything loves to spam sleep, which is so much fun. I love not playing the game! It's all spiders, ghosts, and evil books. At one point, we enter a medium sized room and hear poetry. A ghost comes out of the wall and finishes his poem, but Enda wants us to kill it, so Xero lunges at it. The ghost is upset he read us a poem and "got met with steel" in return. The sentient phantom makes us think something, but the gist is he joins the party. Meet Throg, the friendly ghost. He'll occasionally tell us about the other ghosts in the tower and how they've been here for centuries and gone mad. He's just glad he has friends now!

In battle, Throng sucks. His attack isn't that great, and his moves are situational. Worst still, the status effects don't affect anything in here. What's the point of him? The rest of the dungeon has us avoid invisible floors, carpet color puzzles, and a boss. The floors are self explanatory, but the carpets were new. To pass by two invisible walls, you need to make the room turn the color of the carpet under the wall. To change the color, you need to step on a similar colored rug in the room. The second one can be a bit of a maze, but it's pretty simple once you realize it.

The boss, Artheritus, also looks bad but isn't. His thing is doing damage based on how low your TP is. Throng can help a lot here by casting adrenaline on everyone, which acts like regen does with HP. He can also grant Xero and Enda bonus damage against the undead. Charge after he steals your TP, and don't use special attacks. I barely needed to heal anyone except Throng, who had to use his TP to cast those buffs. We defeated Artheritus with the power of friendship, just as Throng said we could! Despite that, Xero and Enda run ahead, leaving our new friend alone. All Thong wanted was a friend, and I feel kinda bad. They locked the doors behind them, so he walked away really sad. I kinda hate our main character, guys.

In the morning, the doctor gives us the shards he made out of our blood, which we can use to learn new spells. It's straight out of the Final Fantasy VII materia system. I already learned a few of them, so I don't know how worthwhile this is. But we get kicked out, and we can't tell him about Throng, so we leave. We're near Kina's hometown, so we drop her off there. Head to the east and go around the cliffside until you reach Parelin.
 
It's a bit of a dump, but Kina tries to get everyone excited with her homecoming. She asks why nothing has been repaired and jokes about it until someone tells her the bad news. Tren attacked again. The assault lasted hours, and it wiped out half the town. Kina asks about her sister, Aliss... Aliss is buried next to her parents.

Kina rushes north, and Xero goes after her. Edna and Slash stay behind. She's standing at the cliff's edge, and she tells us about her fondest memories. She used to come to this spot all the time and laugh with her sister while her parents did stuff. After they got done playing, they'd just sit in silence and watch the sunset over the massifs across the bay. Silence is her favorite memory. Kina continues by reminding us of what we told her when she first met. "Sometimes, you just need to take a step forward." The camera pans up to reveal the cliff is over a beach covered in sharp rocks... In a slow motion way, the scene plays out. We don't see it happen, but we know that Kina jumped off. Slash drags us away and back to town, and we see several villagers head to the cliff. Everyone is stunned, including me. Xero runs off to the edge of town and yells for the Guide. He didn't know Kina was going to die, and he's of no help. Throng joins us, for some reason, to recite a poem he knows that fits too well with the scene, but he's not here in the morning. Slash tells us we should get used to death; it's a war. He then tells us we're heading back to HQ.

I called it a night.

I have mixed feelings towards this. Firstly, I'm confused. The war flashbacks scenes are giving me vibes that this doesn't mean anything in the long run. We'll figure out how to bring her back, somehow. I'm curious how and if the story will work, so I want to see that. Secondly, I wish she was useful in battle. I didn't have much of a connection to her because Slash is better, and she wasn't around long enough to get any fun scenes. Lastly, why was Thong there? He kinda ruined it. Despite those, the scene really hits hard. It really made me think about my own suicidal thoughts and actions, which isn't fun. Not that I'm saying we should shelf those thoughts; they need to be brought out. The scene works is what I'm trying to say. Or, at least so far. Will it be pivotal to Xero and Enda? You don't see a lot of outright suicides in video games, so I hope the creates give it the respect it needs.